The High Line’s tourist clogged high life

- Aug 22, 2012 6:38 am

Skift Take

The High Line was never really about the locals, and now it is playing out to its logical conclusion.

— Rafat Ali

Share

Tweet

Share

Post

Send

The High Line in New York has become a tourist-clogged catwalk and a catalyst for some of the most rapid gentrification in the city’s history. Not yet four years old, it has already become another stop on the must-see list for out-of-towners, another chapter in the story of New York City’s transformation into Disney World. According to the park’s Web site, 3.7 million people visited the High Line in 2011, only half of them New Yorkers. It’s this overcrowding — not just of the High Line, but of the streets around it — that’s beginning to turn the tide of sentiment.